Human Stories, Safer Roads: How Dev’s Law Is Raising the Bar for Vehicle Safety

The UK Government has announced its new Road Safety Strategy, the first in over a decade. It includes proposed legislation known as Dev’s Law, named for Dev Naran, a young boy who died when his grandfather’s car was hit by a lorry on the motorway.

We’ve been following this development closely because a major strand of the new strategy revolves around road safety technologies, which are tested by OEMs and organisations like Euro NCAP using our hardware. In this blog, we’re taking a close look at the law, what it means to our customers, and declaring our readiness to help make UK roads safer for everyone.

What is Dev’s Law?

Dev’s Law is a part of the Government’s Road Safety Strategy, which has the highly ambitious goal of reducing road deaths in the UK by 65% by 2035. Dev’s Law aims to achieve this goal by making it mandatory for new cars, buses, vans, trucks and trailers to have 18 different safety technologies installed in them. These technologies include systems such as advanced emergency braking (AEB) and advanced distraction warning (ADW) systems that prevent crashes happening in the first place, as well as additional crash tests designed to protect both occupants and pedestrians in the event of a crash.

Currently, the details of the legislation are being consulted upon – including the specific mix of technologies mandated by the law. However, the Government has committed to passing Dev’s Law, and have committed that AEB will be included in the law. It’s highly likely that other systems will be included, too.

OXTS and Dev’s Law

At OXTS we strongly approve of Dev’s Law and the wider Road Safety Strategy. Our goal with our technology has always been to help make the world a safer place; our work with car and HGV OEMs to validate performance of a variety of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), including AEB, has been something we’re very proud of. AEB and similar systems have proven, over and again, their ability to reduce vehicle collisions and the injuries and deaths associated with them; to see them being made mandatory in the UK (as they are in much of Europe) is brilliant.

What systems could Dev’s Law include

The full list of systems, test, and design requirements that Dev’s Law might include can be found here, in the government’s consultation. To summarise, the list comprises:

• Advanced distraction warnings (ADW)
• Blind spot information systems (BSIS)
• Drowsiness and attention warnings (DAW)
• Direct vision (DIV)
• Autonomous emergency braking (AEB)
• The consultation specifies systems designed to detect cyclists and pedestrians as well as vehicles, listing them as separate technologies.
• Event data recorders
• Emergency lane keeping systems (ELKS)
• Emergency stop signals (ESS)
• Frontal full-width impact (FFI) tests
• Frontal off-set impact (FOI) tests
• Intelligent speed assistance (ISA)
• Moving off information systems (MOIS)
• Pole side impact (PSI) tests
• Pedestrian windscreen impact (PWI) tests
• Reversing motion awareness (RMA)
• Tyre pressure monitoring systems (TPMS)

Of that list, ADAS engineers will be particular interested in ADW, BSIS, DAW, AEB, ELKS, and ISA. It’s important to note that none of these technologies are new – they are well-established systems proven to work well in most vehicles. But now that they are mandatory features, as we mentioned, there will be a focus on re-engineering these systems to be as economical as possible, while still performing as required.

The story for HGVs is a little different. HGVs have historically had fewer ADAS technologies available to them, and existing solutions may require some adaptation to work in HGVs. The Euro NCAP requirements for HGVs only came into effect last year.

This is why testing is going to be so crucial as the industry responds to Dev’s law – we expect a range of new solutions to be developed, and they will all need to be validated in a wide range of conditions: on the motorway, in cities, in car parks, on residential streets.

We stand ready

OXTS has always worked to help our customers make the world a better place. Dev’s Law shines a spotlight on the humans that are at the heart of the ADAS testing: the drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists that our customers keep safe by supporting the design of safer vehicles.

We look forward to working with our customers and channel partners to plan out what Dev’s Law means for OEMs and how best to respond. We also look forward to introducing new customers to our positioning technology as they design and produce vehicles that comply with Dev’s Law. Most of all, we’re looking forward to playing our part in achieving a 65% reduction in road deaths in the next decade. What a phenomenal result that would be.

If you have questions about Dev’s Law and what it means for vehicle manufacturers, we are here to help. Click below to get in touch with your questions, and we’ll do our best to answer.